It is quite true what philosophy says: that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards.
Introduction
Perhaps one of the most astonishing characteristics of the future is that it is an elusive temporal category – one that lies ahead. As Reference LuhmannLuhmann (1976, p. 130) suggested, “the future cannot begin” because it is constantly pushed forward by an ongoing present and, thus, remains inaccessible. Therefore, as the comic illustrates, one might attempt to background the future in everyday life, focusing on the “here and now” rather than the “yet-to-come.” However, Søren Kierkegaard reminded us that even if, in the present, we pay less attention to the future, we are constantly opening up and closing off possible futures through the performance of our day-to-day activities. Therefore, any organizational activity that actors perform in the present carries a past, but also casts a shadow on the future (e.g., Reference Bakken, Holt and ZundelBakken et al., 2013; Reference HernesHernes, 2014; Reference Hjorth, Holt and SteyaertHjorth et al., 2015; Reference Holt and JohnsenHolt & Johnsen, 2019).
In addition to the inherent imbrication of the future in organizational activities, actors in all types of organizations – from Indigenous tribes to multinational corporations – engage in activities that are dedicated more or less explicitly to reflecting on and acting upon the future. The ways in which organizational actors do so can take many shapes: a CEO’s Christmas address on the company’s goals and desires for the following year, entrepreneurs’ pitches about new ventures that do not yet exist, activists’ fights for a better world, shamanic visions and ceremonies, meteorologists’ weather forecasts, populist politicians’ dystopic images of societal trends, the construction of vanguard office buildings, the development of technology roadmaps by actors across entire industries, a director’s realization of a science-fiction movie, and press articles by celebrated ‘experts’ on economic outlooks, among others. One of the most prevalent contemporary manifestations of the yet-to-come is the “future of work” (e.g., Reference AdlerAdler, 1992; Reference DonkinDonkin, 2010; Reference MalhotraMalhotra, 2021), a constellation of typically fluid and seemingly flexible, transparent, and inclusive ways of working. By making a difference to extant ways of working that are typically characterized as hierarchical, stiff, opaque, and non-inclusive, performances of the “future of work” in the present can stage what work could be like in the future. As these illustrations indicate, conceptions of the future often serve as a key orientation for action (Reference BeckertBeckert, 2016, Reference Beckert2021), which is why modern organizations spend “a multibillion-dollar [fortune each year to] employ … hundreds of thousands of people” (Reference SherdenSherden, 1998, p. 2) who dedicate most of their work to engaging with the future (Reference WenzelWenzel, 2022). For example, founders of early-stage start-ups invest much of their time scripting and rehearsing pitches that aim to convince others of the future viability of a new venture (Reference Wenzel, Koch, Drori and WrightWenzel & Koch, 2018), which may help them attract funding from investors in expectation of viable business opportunities (Reference Garud, Schildt and LantGarud et al., 2014). Artists and engineers may scan the visions of science-fiction movies as a source of inspiration for futurist creations (Reference ReckwitzReckwitz, 2017). Even winemakers’ seemingly small-scale daily look at the weather forecast may motivate them to protect their grapevines by means of costly and perhaps even hazardous pesticides in response to the prognosis of a rainy day.
These are just a few examples of the consequential activities through which organizational actors engage with the future almost every day. These activities are so ubiquitous that they are almost taken for granted – perhaps, as is the temporal mode of the future itself. However, what do we really know about the discursive formations that organizational actors mobilize to construct and persuade others of their conceptions of the future? Which types of material artifacts do organizational members use to ‘present’ events that are to come? How do they, more or less consciously, in interactions with others, orchestrate discursive, material, and bodily resources to underline aspects of their understanding of the future in order to visualize and mobilize support for it? This chapter invites organization scholars to gain a deeper understanding of the activities through which organizational actors imagine and process the future.
In fact, in spite – or perhaps because – of the ubiquity of future-related activities, a deeper engagement with the temporal mode of the future remains at the fringes of organization research. Despite promising beginnings (e.g., Reference Comi and WhyteComi & Whyte, 2018; Reference Thompson and ByrneThompson & Byrne, 2022; Reference Tsoukas and ShepherdTsoukas & Shepherd, 2004), the nascent or resurgent future-related debates on topics such as forecasting (Reference Bacon-Gerasymenko, Coff and DurandBacon-Gerasymenko et al., 2016), foresight (Reference Gavetti and MenonGavetti & Menon, 2016), and risk (Reference Bromiley, Rau and YuBromiley et al., 2017) translate futures into ‘manageable’ categories by relying on concepts that “enable managers to understand and act upon future environmental uncertainty [to achieve a] competitive advantage” (Reference Rohrbeck, Battistella and HuizinghRohrbeck et al., 2015, p. 1), for example, through “visionary” cognitive skills (Reference SchillingSchilling, 2017) or “strategic intelligence” (Reference Levine, Bernard and NagelLevine et al., 2017). In doing so, they turn engagement with the future into a planning problem (e.g., Reference Brinckmann and SungBrinckmann & Sung, 2015); one that can be tamed through scenario techniques, design thinking, and other planning tools and techniques (Reference HoltHolt, 2004). Thus, in keeping with Reference MarchMarch’s (1995, p. 427) warning that “predictions of the future … are variations on a theme of fantasy: reliably incorrect,” these conceptualizations of “envisioning futures [cast organizational actors into] epic [roles]” (Reference Hjorth, Strati, Drakopoulou Dodd and WeikHjorth et al., 2018, p. 164) to achieve the unachievable: the “anticipation of uncertain futures” (Reference Augier and TeeceAugier & Teece, 2008, p. 1192). This does not mean, however, that organizational actors have responded to ongoing critiques of planning activities (e.g., Reference Barry and ElmesBarry & Elmes, 1997; Reference MarchMarch, 1995; Reference MintzbergMintzberg, 1994) by stopping the performance of these activities; in fact, as Reference Wolf and FloydWolf and Floyd (2017, p. 1754) reiterated, “planning is [still] one of the most widely used management tools in contemporary organizations.” However, in response to the experience of an ever-increasing acceleration of social life, which “has massively heightened the cost of planning [due to] the surrender of collective [and, thus, predictable] rhythms and time structures” (Reference RosaRosa, 2013, p. 126) in contemporary societies, actors have pluralized the ways in which they engage with the future (Reference Koselleck and KoselleckKoselleck, 1989; Reference WagnerWagner, 1994). This turns planning into one among many ways in which organizational actors engage with the yet-to-come, all of which deserve to be explored in greater detail (Reference Wenzel, Krämer, Koch and ReckwitzWenzel et al., 2020).
How can organizational actors’ engagement with something as elusive as the future be explored, if at all? Frankly, the theoretical and methodological affordances for empirical examinations of such a phenomenon have not been fully elaborated. We argue that this has changed along with the ongoing advancement of practice theory (e.g., Reference Feldman and OrlikowskiFeldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Reference NicoliniNicolini, 2013; Reference ReckwitzReckwitz, 2002; Reference Schatzki, Knorr Cetina and von SavignySchatzki et al., 2001; Reference Vaara and WhittingtonVaara & Whittington, 2012). Practice theory draws attention to the enactment of specific activities and their temporal unfolding through which organizing is accomplished in the present. In doing so, practice theory provides a window into the manifold, performative, relationally bundled, and situationally enacted practices through which organizational actors constantly imagine and process the future. Therefore, we argue that practice theory provides a valuable conceptual apparatus for examinations of temporality and the future in organization research.
This chapter invites organization scholars to build on practice theory to draw a more complex picture of organizational actors’ engagement with the future; one that extends beyond a unidimensional focus on planning. To facilitate practice-based examinations of the future in and for organizing, we first introduce the foundational terms and concepts of practice theory. Second, we outline the methodological principles of a practice-based examination of organizational actors’ engagement with the future. The final section outlines implications of a practice-based research agenda on engaging with the future for organization research. As we suggest, such an agenda not only helps us gain a better understanding of an important but under-researched organizational phenomenon; it also challenges the underlying future-related assumptions of many organizational concepts and theories as well as the predominant understanding of what organizing is.
Foundations of a Practice-based Understanding of Engaging with the Future
In contemporary organizations, the future serves as a point of orientation for actions in the present – be it hopeful expectation, strategic positioning, entrepreneurial disruption, or apocalyptic fear. Much of the literature on planning (at least implicitly) treats the future as “a separate entity” (Reference Tsoukas and ShepherdTsoukas & Shepherd, 2004, p. 10) that organizational actors can forecast through “accurate” planning techniques. However, as Reference SherdenSherden (1998, p. 2) suggested, “it is sometimes hard to distinguish science from paranormal, and professional from amateur, because the track records [of predicting or foreseeing the future] are often so similar.”
The impossibility of building courses of action on unequivocal anticipations of the yet-to-come turns organizational actors’ engagement with the future into a phenomenon of the present, in that conceptions of the future and their enactment must be constantly imagined, revised, reworked, and renegotiated. Therefore, we argue that the future is not simply a ‘thing’ that is ‘out there’ waiting to be predicted. Specifically, we propose that, to overcome the elusiveness of this temporal mode, we must observe how the future is ‘produced,’ or how the future is constantly imagined and processed in and through the discursive, bodily, and material enactment of social practices in the present. As we argue, practice theory lends itself to opening up these dynamics. This is because practice theory affords engagement with ways of producing and enacting the future not only in the sense of an “anthropomorphic time-for-us” that actors categorize, organize, and manage through purposive activity, but also in the spirit of “time-beyond-us, or just time,” which “organize[s] us” by guiding day-to-day activities (Reference Holt and JohnsenHolt & Johnsen, 2019, p. 1558, emphases in original).
Practice Theory: Core Elements of a Bundled Perspective
Practice theory refers to a “family of theories” (Reference ReckwitzReckwitz, 2002, p. 244) that includes a number of related theoretical approaches (see also Reference Feldman and OrlikowskiFeldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Reference NicoliniNicolini, 2013; Reference Rasche and ChiaRasche & Chia, 2009). That is, although practice theory is nurtured by different perspectives, such as Bourdieu’s praxeology, ethnomethodology, social-constructionist approaches in various research streams, and philosophical thoughts by Theodore Schatzki and Bruno Latour, there are similarities in their theoretical approach to social life. Practice theory does not lure with extensive theoretical vocabulary but stands out for having a slim conceptual apparatus that spawns empirical research in various fields.
Practice theory draws attention to social practices – for example, structured activity, which is action and structure at the same time – as the smallest unit of social life. Thus, practice theory is not grounded solely either in intentional action or in the determinism of social structures and rules. Rather, practice theory emphasizes the routinized sequences of activities that point to a trajectory of their emergence through routine behavior and performatively (re)produce these structures and rules in and through action. Thus, practice theory builds on a practice ontoepistemology, which considers that social life is produced and recreated in and through the enactment of social practices.
Relatedly, the enactment of social practices is situationally embedded and, thus, changeable. More specifically, although practice theory considers social life to be structured through social ‘practices,’ it is the very enactment in response to the specific situation at hand – for example, social “praxis” (Reference ReckwitzReckwitz, 2002) – through which variations in the performance of social practices can occur. Social practices include two forms of materiality, namely, human bodies and artifacts, both relevant for the performance of social praxis. This implies that individuals, or “practitioners” (Reference WhittingtonWhittington, 2006) are not the (only) core of social praxis. In the end, social practices consist of the multimodal interplay of the bodies of interconnected practitioners, discourses, and material artifacts (Reference Streeck, Goodwin and LeBaronStreeck et al., 2011).
Another premise of practice theory is that the social world consists of a complex web of heterogeneous, interconnected social practices. For example, practices as types of activities can relate to practices of cooperation, that is, the ways of jointly working on a task. A subform of such cooperation practices could be meetings, agreements, and feedback rounds. Some of these practices are so-called dispersed practices (Reference SchatzkiSchatzki, 1996, p. 91), which reappear in different areas. For example, meeting practices are enacted in different social fields, such as in universities or commercial firms. In contrast, “integrated practices” (Reference SchatzkiSchatzki, 1996, p. 98) are tied more closely to specific social fields and, similar to dispersed practices, are historically grounded. For instance, the practice of mastering scientific evidence may be found mainly in academia, albeit with different qualities today compared with past centuries.
Referring once again to Schatzki, social practices constitute a “nexus of doings and sayings” (Reference SchatzkiSchatzki, 1996, p. 89). This means, on the one hand, that social practices are performed and recreated through material carriers, such as bodies and artifacts. On the other hand, this nexus points to a dimension of knowledge because practices are always skilled and recognizable forms of doing. Such knowledge – usually implicit knowledge – organizes the respective social practice and is, in turn, reproduced as “knowing” in and through action (e.g., Reference GherardiGherardi, 2000). Thus, such organizing of activities manifests in practical orders that are relationally entwined in and through performing social practices.
Consequently, practices are always cultural practices in that they contain specific cultural orders of knowledge. They are always material practices in that they are anchored in two types of materiality – bodies and artifacts – and they are always social practices in that they are produced and recreated in a similar way by diverse individuals across different places and different times. In this way, the practice perspective does not depart from acting individuals; rather, it runs its own version of a decentralization of individuals: in a way, social practices avail themselves of the bodies and minds of individuals who are ‘subjectified’ in a Foucauldian sense.
Toward a Practice-based Understanding of Time and the Future: Beyond Objectivism and Subjectivism
A practice theory of the future operates beyond the conventional interpretations of temporality. In organization research (see Reference Reinecke, Ansari, Langley and TsoukasReinecke & Ansari, 2017) and the social sciences more broadly (Reference Reckwitz and ReckwitzReckwitz, 2016), time is usually understood either as an objective or a subjective category. From an objective point of view, time is a neutral background against which events occur. In this vein, time is a standardized, measurable, and comparable unit and is, in principle, the same for all processes. Such a perspective on time puts quantity at center stage and hinges upon Taylorism, according to which work steps are partitioned into measurable time units and compared with other work steps based on performance. This leads to measuring and evaluating the time needed for tasks such as opening drawers or cleaning the floor, and so on. In planning concepts, this understanding of time becomes manifest in the emergence, sequencing, and outcomes of different plans (e.g., Reference 151Arend, Zhao, Song and ImArend et al., 2017; Reference Hopp and GreeneHopp & Greene, 2018) which conceive of time in the same way.
In contrast, a subjective position considers the individual, social, and cultural character of time. This perspective puts the quality of time at center stage; that is, the specific forms of experiencing and understanding time. Thus, a subjective conception of time is a matter of perception, like duration. For example, actors may perceive that opening a drawer takes longer at a later point in the day. Such subjective perceptions of time are not limited to individuals. Similarly, social groups may have their own perceptions of time. For example, the “time culture” in consulting firms (Reference Costas and GreyCostas & Grey, 2014) and start-up accelerators (Reference Wenzel, Koch, Drori and WrightWenzel & Koch, 2018) is characterized by a higher short-term orientation, spontaneity, and frequency of change than in car manufacturers (Reference MaielliMaielli, 2015) and news-publishing companies (Reference KochKoch, 2011) with their orientation toward temporal stability.
The practice perspective is positioned beyond an ‘objective’ temporal structure and a ‘subjective’ perception of time. From this perspective, time is neither an objective precondition for social action nor just a subjective perception; rather, it is the product of enacting social practices. That is, social practices have their own temporal structures and ‘temporal effects’ in that their temporal structures are produced and recreated in and through their enactment. Such a perspective by no means implies that it is positioned within subjectivism. In contrast to the idea of (collective) mental structures that structure perceptions of time, the practice-based understanding of time emphasizes the structuration of time in and through corresponding social practices. In this sense, even a seemingly ‘objective’ time is produced by performing social practices and is therefore culturally loaded like any other. Thus, in practice theory, time is not a precursor of social praxis that is deposited in mental dispositions, but rather the product of performing activities. In this vein, a practice perspective implies considering time as a routinized, or repetitive, way of dealing with time that is shared by several people.
The Temporality of Social Praxis, the Temporality of Social Practices, and Temporal Practices
What does the temporality of practice theory imply for the examination of how organizational actors engage with the future? From a practice perspective, references to the future in social life can be found in three different but interrelated ways: the temporality of social praxis in general, the temporality of each social practice, and ‘temporal practices’ in the narrow sense (see also Reference Reckwitz and ReckwitzReckwitz, 2016).
The first form relates to the overall temporality of social praxis. This refers to the foundational and inherent role of time in social praxis, which is always temporally structured. Social praxis is a sequence of activities that has a future and a past in that each activity refers to previous activities and is succeeded by further activities. Thus, as a “temporally unfolding and spatially dispersed nexus of doings and sayings” (Reference SchatzkiSchatzki, 1996, p. 89), social praxis is conceived as a stream of activities that have a ‘before’ and an ‘after.’ Social praxis (re)produces a reference to the past through repeated, rehearsed bodily performances of activities. However, in its situational enactment, social praxis is repeatedly subject to both smaller and larger changes that create scope for something new – even for changes of social praxis. Reference GarfinkelGarfinkel (1967, p. 9) called this “for another first time” and later, “for another next first time” (Reference GarfinkelGarfinkel, 2002, p. 182). Such reenactments of social praxis give rise to a host of potential futures that cannot be conceived as linear projections of the past. Rather, through the momentary performance of social praxis, actors (re)interpret the past and give sense to possible future events to make sense of and enact the present situation (e.g., Reference Kaplan and OrlikowskiKaplan & Orlikowski, 2013; Reference Schultz and HernesSchultz & Hernes, 2013).
In contrast to this foundational temporality of social praxis, we can distinguish a second way in which time is relevant in social practice: the temporality of specific social practices. Just as every social praxis has a foundational temporal dimension, social practices can be distinguished in terms of their specific temporality. This then relates to the specific temporal structures that are produced and recreated in and through the enactment of each social practice (Reference Orlikowski and YatesOrlikowski & Yates, 2002) – not its foundational ontological structure of activities. Here, we can distinguish between two forms. First, the enactment of specific social practices always precedes other activities and events. For example, in a board meeting, managers can lay the foundations for organizational change, or the board meeting itself may constitute a response to organizational challenges. In this sense, such meetings always constitute an (enacted) anticipation of the yet-to-come and refer back to the past in that they are the outcome of previously performed social practices. However, both temporal references – toward the future and the past – do not deplete in the immediate temporal proximity but make more distant temporal references. For example, it may take several years for a board meeting to be acknowledged as a decisive event, and at the same time, the cultural meeting praxis is historically grounded in a long-standing practice of cooperative debate (Reference SennettSennett, 2012). Second, social practices can themselves structure time. For example, during the enactment of board meetings, actors typically distinguish between times allotted for speaking and those for silence, which are allocated to different participants. In addition, actors usually formulate a specific beginning and an approximate ending. Additionally, the dramaturgical sequence of activities is often organized such that the content-related climax is separated from other, less important aspects (see also Reference Jarzabkowski and SeidlJarzabkowski & Seidl, 2008). Thus, through the enactment of such meeting practices, board meetings obtain a ritualized (Reference Johnson, Prashantham, Floyd and BourqueJohnson et al., 2010) temporal rhythm that structures the flow of activities therein (see also Reference Gilbreth and GilbrethGilbreth & Gilbreth, 1917).
These two ways of manifesting future in practice theory represent “time-beyond-us” (Reference Holt and JohnsenHolt & Johnsen, 2019) in that the present, past, and future are immanently and inevitably reproduced in and through social praxis and practice. From these two forms, we can distinguish a third way of interpreting the interplay between time and social practice, which represents “time-for-us” (Reference Holt and JohnsenHolt & Johnsen, 2019). This way refers to those practices that are related to time in the narrow sense – the so-called temporal practices. One prominent example is the social practice of remembering (e.g., Reference Gioia, Corley and FabbriGioia et al., 2002; Reference Hatch and SchultzHatch & Schultz, 2017). This practice refers to the specific routinized activities through which actors in the present bring to life and connect with previous events. Remembering includes the enactment of rituals such as the (staged) performance of commemoration events at a company’s anniversary and the materialization of an organization’s history in movies and books, which commemorate past events such as the establishment of the company. In turn, “future-making practices” can be understood as “a set of practices through which actors produce and enact the future” (Reference Wenzel, Krämer, Koch and ReckwitzWenzel et al., 2020, p. 1441). Future-making practices thus include the streams of activities of imagining, including, and processing future events and occasions that are performed in the present. Together, they constitute a bundle that we call ‘future work,’ that is, constellations of future-making practices that participate in the production of the yet-to-come.
Future Work: Performativity, Situationality, Heterogeneity, Relationality
This overview of the foundations of a theory of social practice points to four dimensions relevant to practice-based examinations of how organizational actors engage with the future through ‘future work.’ In the following, we describe these dimensions and explicate their role in the analysis of future-making practices.
First, practice theory highlights the performativity of the future. By taking into account the specific social practices through which actors imagine and process the yet-to-come, it draws attention to the (un)doing of the future. This implies that a practice-based examination of engaging with the future describes and explains not only how organizational actors imagine and process the yet-to-come but also which conceptions of the future emerge in and through this process. For instance, whereas actors produce and recreate future projections of the past through the enactment of prognostic-probabilistic procedures, visionary narratives of the future explicitly refer to a structural break with contemporary and past experiences. Thus, these procedures are consequential for the emergence of different conceptions of the future; in turn, these conceptions initiate further activities, such as passively bearing, actively pursuing, or defending against these images of the yet-to-come. Taken together, the performativity of the future implies that conceptions of the future are closely entwined with the future-making practices through which they come into being, and set in motion a stream of subsequent activities through which they may or may not become ‘realized.’
The second dimension relates to the situationality of future work. Practice theory considers engaging with the future as a contemporary phenomenon. Specifically, it draws attention to future-making practices as ways in which actors imagine and process the yet-to-come in the present. As such, this is not a novelty in debates on time and temporality in organization research (e.g., Reference HernesHernes, 2014) and the social sciences more broadly. Even the philosophical stream of pragmatism (Reference MeadMead, 1932) and the theory of social differentiation refer to such “contemporary futures” (Reference LuhmannLuhmann, 1976), which organizational actors enact “as if” they were already a matter of the present (Reference Koch, Wenzel, Senf and MaibierKoch et al., 2018; Reference Pitsis, Clegg, Marosszeky and Rura-PolleyPitsis et al., 2003). At the same time, however, practice theory draws attention to ‘future presents,’ which are always bound to the present as imaginations, expectations, or forecasts. Such an emphasis on situationality often evokes the critique that practice theory would delimit itself to a situationalism that does not take into account ‘macro’ or societal structures (see Reference Seidl and WhittingtonSeidl & Whittington, 2014). Here, we note that practice theory does not decouple the situational enactment of specific streams of activities from broader social structures. It just locates the latter differently; not as a precursor of, but as being relationally entwined with, social praxis (e.g., Reference GiddensGiddens, 1984). Thus, if broader social structures, such as organizational cultures, hierarchies, or broader principles of social order, play a role in and for the situational enactment of future-making practices and other social practices, they become manifest as such in social praxis.
Third, the heterogeneity of social praxis is relevant for the examination of future work. Given that practice theory draws attention to the specific practices through which the future is ‘made,’ it does not stop at the identification of prescriptive conceptions of the future (e.g., Reference LêLê, 2013), but takes into account the empirical diversity of future praxis through which such conceptions come into being. Thus, a practice perspective focusses not only on those procedures that are explicitly dedicated to imagining and processing the future – such as planning procedures – but also those mundane activities that are not explicitly oriented toward the yet-to-come but are, nonetheless, consequential for the ways in which actors imagine and process the future. This coarse-grained grid for the identification of future-making practices precludes antecedent theoretical decisions: it is through the empirical analysis of social praxis that the specific ways in which organizational actors engage with the future are identified. In this way, practice theory takes seriously the possibility of ‘surprise’ and makes it generative in that a practice perspective sustains openness for exploring the manifold ways in which future-making practices become manifest in social praxis. Through such an approach, multiple future-making practices may be identified – and, with them, different futures.
Fourth, practice theory points to the relationality of future work. Understanding social praxis as “nexus” (Reference SchatzkiSchatzki, 1996) and, therefore, as the interplay of several streams of activities reminds us that future-making practices are never just stand-alone entities but are processually embedded in a web of practices.
The relationality of future-making practices highlights several analytical categories that are of special interest. First, practice theory puts special emphasis on the materiality of social life in a double sense: it is interested in human bodies and artifacts in and through which social practices are enacted. As routinized performances, social practices rely on competent bodies through which they come to life. In the process of acquiring a practice, humans learn to move their bodies in a skillful way. However, from a practice perspective, humans do not instrumentally use their bodies, given that practice theory does not privilege the mind over the body. Rather, humans learn to ‘be’ a body in a certain way (Reference ReckwitzReckwitz, 2002). Likewise, artifacts play an important role because their enactment structures social practices to a significant extent. Therefore, both human bodies and material objects are carriers of social practices that have to be there, and be used to perform and reproduce social practices, and human bodies and material objects are inseparably interconnected (see also Reference StieglerStiegler, 1998). For future-making practices, this means that actors produce and recreate the future in and through bodily performances and the inclusion of artifacts. For example, actors (may) move their bodies differently to imagine and process the future in weekly management meetings than they do in shamanic ceremonies. Furthermore, they include different material objects through which actors produce and recreate the future: whereas the former case typically involves ubiquitous office supplies, flipcharts, and electronic tablets, the latter case presumably includes ‘natural’ material objects outside of a work context.
In addition to this material dimension, the enactment of social practices is guided by a “practical sense” (Reference BourdieuBourdieu, 1980) that can only be observed in and through their performance. Thus, the sense and meaning of a social practice can only be found in and emerge through its enactment. This processual understanding of sense, again, points to the examination of specific situations of imagining and processing the future in actu. At the same time, it relates to collective knowledge orders that are fundamentally entwined with this practical sense. Through a shared knowledge horizon, social practices refer to practically meaningful rules that display their ordering power in social praxis. For instance, the structuring of an organization’s future based on planning principles may not be reflected in the organizational chart but in the ‘know how’ of performed practices, that is, in the development and pursuit of a plan.
An interesting case of future-making practices can be found in temporal discourses. From a practice perspective, discourses are a special case of social practices. They can be understood as ways of representing social reality in and through which actors produce and recreate sign systems, arguments, narratives, and visualizations. In the case of future-making practices, this relates to specific discourses of broaching and representing the future (e.g., Reference CrillyCrilly, 2017; Reference Stjerne, Wenzel and SvejenovaStjerne et al., 2022). Such discursive representations of the future can be found in vision and mission statements, strategic plans, speeches at company anniversaries, prognostics of the research and development department, and futurologies of popular science. For practice-based examinations, such future-related discourses are part of discourse/practice complexes in which they are entwined with other discursive and nondiscursive practices. In this way, written or articulated predictions become a material foundation for discussions about organizational futures – as apocalyptic messages for some and hopeful messages for others. It is important to note here that such discourses are not just neutral comments but are also part of the social praxis in organizations.
Being thought of as relationally entwined, future-making practices are to be considered as a complex of all these parts and components. Future praxis always has a material dimension, which consists of various human bodies and artifacts that come to life through their enactment (e.g., Reference Comi and WhyteComi & Whyte, 2018). Therefore, it includes and is entwined with future-related discourses, structured by a practical sense, and, therefore, relates to collectively shared knowledge orders. However, empirical observations of future-making practices not only focus on these complexes in an isolated way but also take into account how they are relationally interconnected with other social practices. More specifically, the enactment of future-making practices evokes the performance of other practices. For example, in public administrations, planning procedures are now highly institutionalized and regulated by laws. However, the ritualized performance of related practices can also be observed in less regulated contexts. For example, company anniversaries include and evoke a host of practices that are enacted in a routinized way – such as giving a speech, invoking a vision, and performing a ceremonial act – which actors discuss in the in-house magazine or in the cafeteria for example. Thus, the idea of relationality creates an opportunity to observe a network of numerous practices that enable and constrain the production and recreation of future-making practices. Notably, such relations can also be observed and traced by examining their history. For example, one may identify specific ‘quotes’ in prior performances of future-making practices that actors consciously or unconsciously rely on later.
Prospection: Organizing (for) the Future and Future Work
In this chapter, we began by highlighting the ubiquitous role of the future as a key orientation in organizations in general and in the ‘future of work’ in particular. Organizational actors have always engaged with the yet-to-come and will always do so – be it in the form of creative action, research and development, strategic positioning, or the entrepreneurial pursuit of (future) opportunities. However, as we also suggested, the future is an elusive temporal category that denies any direct access, which turns organizational actors’ engagement with the future into a phenomenon of the present in that the future must be constantly imagined, revised, reworked, and renegotiated. Practice theory, then, opens a window into the situationally enacted, performative, heterogeneous, and relationally entwined ways through which organizational actors engage with the future. This turns the ‘future of work’ into ‘future work,’ that is, a bundle of practices through which futures are continually made, unmade, and remade. Therefore, this chapter invites organization scholars to gain a practice-based understanding of how organizational actors engage with the yet-to-come.
A practice-based understanding of engaging with the future generates a number of questions, such as: Which kinds of explicitly dedicated or mundane, everyday ‘future-making practices’ do organizational actors enact? How does the enactment of future-making practices performatively evoke organizational futures, and which kinds of futures do the different future-making practices ‘make’? How do organizational actors coordinate the enactment of several, potentially even numerous future-making practices? In which ways are the discursive, bodily, and material aspects of future-making practices consequential for engaging with the yet-to-come and the conceptions of the future that are produced and recreated? What specific narratives do organizational actors mobilize in this process? Finding answers to these and other questions allows organization scholars to gain insights into engaging with the future as a key challenge of contemporary organizing.
However, both the ubiquitous nature of the future in organizations and the practice perspective on this phenomenon imply more than drawing attention to an under-researched aspect of organizing: they question the way in which the future is, at least implicitly, conceptualized in many prevalent theories of organizing and organization. Specifically, much of the organizational literature still conceives of the future as a plannable and, thus, ‘manageable’ temporal mode. For example, in the resource-based view, the effective use of organizational assets is based on “a very clear vision of the future [that] reflect[s] firms’ systematic, company-wide strategic planning process” (Reference BarneyBarney, 1991, p. 111). Similarly, the theoretical statements by organization scholars interested in dynamic capabilities (Reference Teece, Pisano and ShuenTeece et al., 1997) largely build on “up-front planning” (Reference ArendArend, 2015, p. 79). In turn, parts of the institutional literature (Reference Meyer and RowanMeyer & Rowan, 1977) consider planning-based responses to institutional forces as key to achieving legitimacy (Reference Honig and KarlssonHonig & Karlsson, 2004). And despite the openness of strategy-as-practice (SAP) scholars for a practice-based understanding of engaging with temporal categories (e.g., Reference Kaplan and OrlikowskiKaplan & Orlikowski, 2013), “[s]trategic planning has taken a central place in SAP research” (Reference Vaara and WhittingtonVaara & Whittington, 2012, p. 292). This planning-based approach to the future reflects recent observations of the continued enactment of conventional planning activities in organizations (e.g., Reference Wolf and FloydWolf & Floyd, 2017). However, it underplays the plurality of the ways in which organizational actors engage with the future (e.g., Reference WagnerWagner, 1994), which turns classical planning procedures into one among various future-making practices – perhaps only with the purpose of creating spectacular illusions of rational anticipations of the yet-to-come, while actually engaging with the future in different ways (Reference Flyverbom and ReineckeFlyverbom & Reinecke, 2017). This implies that conventional explanations for organizational survival and demise based on the (non)ascription of competences to ‘correctly’ anticipate and act upon the future (e.g., Reference Levine, Bernard and NagelLevine et al., 2017; Reference SchillingSchilling, 2017) are not just incomplete; they might also be problematic in that they confound the symbolic management of the future on the front stage with the ‘real’ activities through which organizational actors engage with the yet-to-come on the back stage. A practice perspective on engaging with the future in organizations helps organization scholars uncover such activities and, in doing so, provide richer explanations for the dynamics of stability and change through which organizational actors respond to but perhaps even performatively cocreate and shape futures.
More broadly, reconceiving the notion of the future in organizing has implications for our understanding of what organizing is. The growing interest in the temporal mode of the past (e.g., Reference Godfrey, Hassard, O’Connor, Rowlinson and RuefGodfrey et al., 2016; Reference Hatch and SchultzHatch & Schultz, 2017; Reference Suddaby and FosterSuddaby & Foster, 2017) indicates that organizing is still conceived mainly as historically grown processes through which work is coordinated and order is (re)created. However, in light of the ubiquity and consequentiality of the future in organizations, organizing may also be conceived as a “future-oriented dwelling” (Reference Chia and HoltChia & Holt, 2009, p. 128, emphasis in original), one that is directed toward the (re)production of (dis)order in light of, or despite, the ongoing inaccessibility of the future, which eludes itself from being ‘managed’ through planning techniques alone. When considering the present as a space between the future and the past, such dwelling can occur in and through the constant inhabitation of ‘spaces for play/invention,’ that is, in-between “space[s] of actualization, actuated by movements toward future creation” (Reference HjorthHjorth, 2004, p. 421; Reference HjorthHjorth, 2005), which results in continual “speculative movement[s] towards the future” (Reference Hjorth, Strati, Drakopoulou Dodd and WeikHjorth et al., 2018, p. 157). From this perspective, organizational structures and processes are not (only) the outcomes of past activities and events but (also) constitute organizational actors’ responses to their imaginations of the yet-to-come and are constantly ‘in-the-making.’ Evidently, such a perspective sympathizes with process views of organizing (e.g., Reference Bakken, Holt and ZundelBakken et al., 2013; Reference HernesHernes, 2014; Reference Hjorth, Holt and SteyaertHjorth et al., 2015; Reference Holt and JohnsenHolt & Johnsen, 2019; Reference Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas and Van de VenLangley et al., 2013; Reference Tsoukas and ChiaTsoukas & Chia, 2002) and puts the driving force of engaging with the future at center stage. Therefore, examining the future more systematically in organization research implies conceiving of organizational phenomena as processes and exploring the prevalence of the future therein. We hope that the practice-based approach to engaging with the future will help future research do so.
